Servants A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times (Audible Audio Edition) Lucy Lethbridge, Helen Stern, Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : Servants A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times (Audible Audio Edition) Lucy Lethbridge, Helen Stern, Audible Studios Books
The vividly told lives of British servants and the upper crust they served.
From the immense staff running a lavish Edwardian estate and the lonely maid-of-all-work cooking in a cramped middle-class house to the poor child doing chores in a slightly less poor household, servants were essential to the British way of life. They were hired not only for their skills but also to demonstrate the social standing of their employers - even as they were required to tread softly and blend into the background. More than simply the laboring class serving the upper crust - as popular culture would have us believe - they were a diverse group that shaped and witnessed major changes in the modern home, family, and social order. Spanning over 100 years, Lucy Lethbridge - in this "best type of history" (Literary Review) - brings to life through letters and diaries the voices of countless men and women who have been largely ignored by the historical record. She also interviews former and current servants for their recollections of this waning profession.
At the fore are the experiences of young girls who slept in damp corners of basements, kitchen maids who were required to stir eggs until the yolks were perfectly centered, and cleaners who had to scrub floors on their hands and knees despite the wide availability of vacuum cleaners. We also meet a lord who solved his inability to open a window by throwing a brick through it and Winston Churchill's butler who did not think Churchill would know how to dress on his own.
A compassionate and discerning exploration of the complex relationship between the server, the served, and the world they lived in, Servants opens a window onto British society from the Edwardian period to the present.
Servants A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times (Audible Audio Edition) Lucy Lethbridge, Helen Stern, Audible Studios Books
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Servants A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times (Audible Audio Edition) Lucy Lethbridge, Helen Stern, Audible Studios Books Reviews
I have to admit I prefer novels to factual books. This one, however, has grabbed me! Lethbridge is a fine writer and the book's contents are fascinating.
Along with debunking the common notions of downstairs help, it also relates the history and attitude of labor saving house hold devices. Don't want to give the maids a chance for idleness and sloth and keeping everything the same as it has always been. This includes central heating, electricity, or those new-fangled gas lights. Views and attitudes by the elite and those upstarts, the middle class, are fascinating. Also goes into the slow emancipation of women, rights for workers, and many other areas of this era as seen by the working class and the high mucky-mucks.
As other readers have observed it is very hard to refer to the abundant footnotes in the addition. I can't demote it to a lower rating because the subject matter and writing are excellent.
I also appreciate the many unfamiliar words that are used. I love vocabulary building reads. In that area the built in dictionary is wonderful.
If you are interested in a great book about how it REALLY was this is a great read.
"Servants" is a beautifully documented account of the role of serving people in England from the 19th century to the present. Many of we Americans can only summon visions of exquisitely run country homes with well respected staff or the "Little Princess" reduced to scullery and living in hunger and cold in the dark attic. While both extremes existed, in fact a middle ground did exist. Most fascinating to me was the author's juxtaposition of the view of serving person with that of the employer. As she wrily notes, "all sorts of desires become elevated to necessities when there is someone else to do the hard labour of realising them for you." Even the English home was shaped by deep dependence on servants. Even when available, electric appliances and central heating were not added until the supply of willing employees in fact dried up.
In each era, the book explores the range of domestic jobs available. While the grand houses did in fact provide a huge number of arcane and specific jobs, most servants worked as "dog's bodies" in small homes in which each servant had a huge amount of work to complete. The individual anecdotes bring the writing to life. And to round this work off, Lethbridge has included society attitudes, government regulation, and newspaper ads and columns as sources. I found this to be a well rounded treatment of the often romanticized, and seldom missed by the servant, age of servants.
I would have given this book 5 stars but for the fact that it is not well-suited to . The book itself is a terrific read. It is well-researched & -written, full of lively anecdotes, & it gives the reader a rich insight into the employer (more accurately, master/mistress)-servant relationships & class divisions of a Victorian era that actually lasted well into the 20th century. Imagine being a young teenager having your hands forced into boiling water so that you'd be better able to tolerate the requirements of doing the family's laundry, or having to turn your face to the wall if your master/mistress happened to enter the room while you were cleaning it, so that they could pretend you weren't really there. It appears that at least some employers adored their servants, even calling out for them from their own deathbeds ("Put your arms around me, Margery!"), but those same employers rarely provided any kind of care for their servants when the latter became ill or old, although they nevertheless fought fiercely against what is now the National Health Service. After reading "Servants," you'll be hard put to see "Downton Abbey" & "Upstairs, Downstairs" as much different from "Gone With the Wind."
However, I was frustrated by the fact that, although the version includes an "Index," the index references have no page numbers, nor can the reader use footnote numbers or asterisks to find the relevant endnotes. You can use the pad to highlight a word or phrase in the Index & find the relevant pages, but you have to be really careful how you go about it. If I had to do this again, I'd order the hard copy.
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